Welcome to The Year That Was

08/12/19 • 18 min

Welcome to the The Year That Was: 1919.

I'm so excited to announce this new project. I've always been fascinated by year-by-year approach to history, and I'm thrilled to be taking a close look at 1919. Over the course of the next few months, we're going to look at wars and revolutions, peace conferences and treaties, scientific discoveries and artistic innovations, scandals and triumphs.

The podcast launches September 3rd. Make sure to subscribe now so you don't miss a single episode.

Meanwhile, here are some notes on today's trailer:

Gilbert M. Hitchcock, a Democrat from Nebraska, served as U.S. Senator from 1911 to 1923 and was Chairmas on the Foreign Relations Committee until 1918. He was a supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and a strong advocate for the League of Nations. In 1919, he recorded a speech on the League as part of a Columbia Gramaphone Company series called "Nation's Forum." You can listen to the full speech on the Library of Congress website.

Nannie and James Pharis told their story about the Spanish Flu Epidemic as part of the Piedmont Social History Project. They were recorded at their home on January 8, 1979. The entire interview is fascinating, and you can hear it and read the transcript on the Going Viral website, a project of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina dedicated to documenting the impact and implications of the 1918 flu pandemic. (Scroll down to see the Pharis interview--it's the second on the page.)

Rilla of Ingleside is the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery. This is the cover of the first edition of the novel. The book was published in 1921, but Montgomery began writing it in 1919 immediately after World War I ended. It is, as best I can tell, the only contemporary account of World War I from the perspective of women on the homefront. Rilla of Ingleside is widely available, including from Amazon and most libraries. You can also listen to a free audio recording by LibriVox, which offers free recordings of books in the public domain. That's where I found my clips of Karen Savage reading the novel. You can find the LibriVox recording here.

William Butler Yeats was one of the most important poets of his generation. A mystic with a strong belief in the supernatural, he channeled his reaction to current events into powerful symbolic imagery. You can read the entire poem The Second Coming or see actor Dominic West reading it in a powerful performance.

Tsar Nicholas II, ruled as the last autocrat of all Russias but was brought down in 1917 by the Russian Revolution. His entire family, pictured here, were executed by Bolshevik forces. You can see the entire BBC documentary from which I quote on the British Pathe and Reuters Historical Collection website.

Eamon de Valera dedicated the early part of his life to achieving independence for Ireland from British rule. He fought during the Easter Uprising, served time in British prisons, and was elected president of Sinn Fein and the shadow Irish assembly Dail Eireann. He spent 18 months of his presidency in the United States raising money and lobbying for the Irish cause. During his months in the U.S., he recorded this speech as part of the Columbia "Nation's Forum" series. You can listen to the entire speech and read a transcript on the Library of Congress website.

An unnamed Palestinian man spoke to the BBC in 1936 about life in the British Mandate territory. In 1919, the British took over Palestine and began welcoming Jews with the goal to create a Jewish homeland. You can see the man's entire statement on the British Pathe and Reuter's Historical Collection website.

"How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)" was a 1919 hit with mu...

Welcome to the The Year That Was: 1919.

The podcast launches September 3rd. Make sure to subscribe now so you don't miss a single episode.

Meanwhile, here are some notes on today's trailer:

"How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)" was a 1919 hit with mu...

Next Episode

1919: A Time of Hope or a Time of Dread?

Lucy Maud Montgomery became one of Canada's most successful and beloved authors with the publication of the Anne of Green Gables series. After Montgomery lived through World War I, she decided to recount the war years through the eyes of Anne's teenage daughter. The result is Rilla of Ingleside.

This is the cover of the first edition of Rilla of Ingleside, and it's almost unbearably sweet. The book itself has plenty of sappy moments, but it doesn't shy away from the enormous grief and anxiety experienced by families with sons in the war.

Rilla of Ingleside is available in numerous editions, and I've linked to one on Amazon at the bottom of the page. Or you can listen via LibriVox, a service that records books in the public domain; I used the LibraVox recording, by Karen Savage, in this episode.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian poet, physician and author. He served as a battefield surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, treating the wounded in a 8-foot by 8-foot bunker dug into a dyke along the Yser canal. During the battle, McCrae's good friend Lt. Alexis Helmer was killed. After attending Helmer's funeral, McCrae wrote the poem "In Flander's Fields." It was published in December 1915 and soon became one of the most popular verses of the war.

McCrae writes in the poem about the poppies that he saw growing in Flanders; poppies are the first flowers that bloom in the churned-up earth of battlefields. The enormous popularity of the poem led directly to the poppy being adopted as a symbol of remembrance. Initially, poppies were used only in commemoration of the Great War, but over time they came to represented all lost in battle. Many people wear poppies in the first two weeks of November and on Remembrance Day, November 11th, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

McCrae did not survive the war. He died on January 28, 1918 of pneumonia.

You can read the entire poem "In Flanders Fields" on the Poetry Foundation website or hear Leonard Cohen read "In Flanders Fields"

William Butler Yeats was no doubt a brilliant poet, but he had a bad habit of falling in love with beautiful, tormented, unattainable women. He decided to leave all of them behind in 1917 and marry someone "serviceable" instead.

Georgie Hyde-Lees, soon to be George Yeats, was the "serviceable" woman Yeats chose. She was smart, capable and self-effacing--and saved her marriage when she discovered her "gift" for automatic writing.

This is another view of George, in a painting titled Mrs. W.B. Yeats by the artist and illustrator Edmund Dulac. Dulac is best remembered for his illustrations for children's books, including fairy tales and The Arabian Nights. (I had a copy of his illustrated Stories from Hans Christian Anderson and have a vivid memory of his drawing for "The Princess and the Pea" of a huge stack of mattresses.) Dulac and Yeats were close friends and occassional collaborators. Dulac places George in a fairy tale setting, with a charging unicorn in the background. Yeats must have loved it.

You can read the entire poem "The Second Coming" on the Poetry Foundation website. Or check out actor Dominic West reading it in a production for Irish public broadcasting service RTE.

Research Notes

I referred to several biographies of Yeats, including the following:

Keith Aldritt, W.B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu. New York: Clarkson Potter. 1997.
R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life II: The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003
A. Norman Jeffares, W.B. Yeats: A New Biography. London: Continuum. 2001

I also consulted the one biography of George Yeats:

Ann Saddlemeyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W.B. Yeats. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002.
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